RISE Expert Biographies Daria Gołębiowska-Tataj (PL) (Chair) Daria Tataj is a strategy advisor, board member and entrepreneur. Since 2015 she has been a member of the RISE High-Level Expert Group to Carlos Moedas, the EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science. In 2017 she was appointed as Chair of the RISE Group. She also advises the World Economic Forum, the European Space Agency, multinational companies, start-ups and is regularly invited to speak about disruptive innovation and the network society around the world. Her book Innovation and Entrepreneurship: A New Growth Model for Europe beyond the Crisis was endorsed by the Holberg Prize winner Manuel Castells as ‘a fundamental, innovative book on innovation that will reshape the way we think about innovation and may yield the most needed policy lessons for a new model of growth in the aftermath of the economic crisis’. Dr. Tataj was one of the architects of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and its Knowledge and Innovation Communities serving for six years as an Executive Member of the EIT founding Board. The EIT is an EU funding institution that brings together research, education, innovation and entrepreneurship. The agency has funded a portfolio of Knowledge and Innovation Communities, which were recognized as some of the most successful policy experiments, and eventually the EIT received a multibillion EUR budget. Daria is the CEO of Tataj Innovation, a strategy consulting practice. She founded the company with a mission to help companies and governments build entrepreneurial ecosystems. An alumna of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council, Daria has been recognized as a ‘Social Innovator 2014’ in Poland and a VV100 by Vital Voices Global Partnership. She currently lives and works in Barcelona. Megan Carey (PT/US) Megan R. Carey, PhD is a Group Leader in the Neuroscience Program at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal. She received her PhD in 2005 from the University of California, San Francisco, where her thesis was awarded UCSF’s Krevans Distinguished Dissertation Award. After a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Carey started her independent laboratory at the Champalimaud. Her lab combines quantitative behavioral analysis, genetics, and physiology to understand how the brain learns to control coordinated movements. Dr. Carey was an International Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2012-2017 and received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council in 2015. She is a Scholar, and the current Chair, of the FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence. She has co-chaired a number of international scientific conferences, including COSYNE (Computational and Systems Neuroscience, Utah, USA), the Gordon Research Conference on the Cerebellum (Maine, USA), and the Forum of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016; Berlin, Germany, 2018). Dr. Carey has served on the RISE high-level advisory group to the European Commission since 2015. 1 Willie Donnelly (IE) Willie Donnelly was appointed President of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) in April 2015, having held the position of Head of Research and Innovation at the Institute for the previous 10 years. He is founder of the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) which carries out research into mobile services, internet of things and communications management research centre. Prior to entering academia he worked for 15 years in the telecommunications and utilities industries. His main areas of academic research interest are the management of next generation networks. He has extended his work in this area to focus on smart agriculture and in particular the development of integrate communications management solutions and decision support systems for secure food production. Nationally he has led two HEA funded PRTLI projects, M-Zones and FutureCom and was director of the SFI Strategic Cluster FAME. He is a Co-PI on the SFI funded Principle Investigator Precision Dairy project and of the Science Foundation Ireland research centre Connect. He has led more than 30 Pan-European projects working with key telecommunications industry and academic leaders. Willie has a strong interest in regional economic development and has been a key driver in the establishment of a cluster of mobile services companies in the South-East of Ireland. He is founder member of a number of High Potential Start-up Companies including Feedhenry which was acquired by Redhat in 2014. Luke Georghiou (UK) Professor Luke Georghiou is the University of Manchester’s Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, providing strategic leadership and operational management across the full-range of University functions. From 2010 to 2017 Luke was responsible for the University’s research strategy and its implementation and doctoral training. He continues in his new role to be responsible for business engagement and commercialisation activities. He is active in research and policy advice to governments and business with current work on innovation management, public procurement and innovation and evaluation of the national demonstrator project for Internet of Things (CityVerve). Luke is a member of RISE, the European Commissioner for Research and Innovation’s high-level policy advisory group. He has chaired and been a member of several high-level inquiries and advisory bodies, including being rapporteur of the influential Aho Group report to European leaders, 'Creating an Innovative Europe' which put demand-side innovation policy onto the political agenda. He was Co-Champion of the 2016 Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF), Europe’s largest pan-disciplinary science conference. Luke is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Manchester Science Partnerships, the UK’s largest science park company. Since 2016 he has chaired the Steering Committee of the European Universities Association Council for Doctoral Education. 2 He is on the editorial board of eight journals and has published extensively in leading outlets including Science and Nature. He has supervised 40 doctoral candidates to successful completion. His publications include articles in journals such as Nature, Science, Harvard Business Review and Research Policy. He was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2011. He holds a PhD (1982) and BSc from The Victoria University of Manchester and has been the Director of the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research. Most recently he was Vice-President for Research and Innovation. Stefania Giannini (IT) Ms Stefania Giannini was appointed Assistant Director-General for Education in May 2018, becoming the top United Nations official in the field of education. In this position, she provides strategic vision and leadership for UNESCO’s Education Sector in coordinating and monitoring the implementation of the Education 2030 Agenda, encapsulated in Sustainable Development Goal 4. She has devoted her career to promoting education as a fundamental human right, through the importance of language, lifelong learning, culture, freedom of expression and identity, in an effort to ensure more inclusive and equal societies. With an academic background is in the Humanities (PhD in Linguistics), Ms Giannini became Professor of Linguistics in 1992 and served as Rector of the University for Foreigners of Perugia (2004 – 2012), being one of the first female Rectors and the youngest at that time in Italy. At the same time, she was member of the Selection Committee of the Erasmus Mundus programme in Brussels (2005 – 2009), the person responsible for international relations in the Committee of the Conference of Italian University Rectors (2006 – 2010) and a member of the National Commission for the Promotion of Italian Culture Abroad at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006 – 2011). Later on, in her role as Senator of the Republic of Italy (2013 – 2018) and Minister of Education, Universities and Research (2014 – 2016), she developed and implemented a structural reform of the Italian education system, centred on social inclusion and targeting cultural awareness. Ms Giannini also chaired the Education and Competitiveness Council of the European Union during the Italian Presidency (July – December 2014), working to promote the importance of creativity, cultural heritage and innovation as tools for dialogue between diverse populations, with a view to preventing radicalization and extremism. Marga Gual Soler, PhD (ES) MARGA GUAL SOLER, Ph.D., is a Senior Project Director in the Center for Science Diplomacy at AAAS, where she explores the power of science as a universal language to help break down barriers and build bridges between people and nations. She works with governments, universities, non-governmental and international organizations worldwide to connect scientists and engineers with policy and has trained thousands of emerging leaders to engage at the science-diplomacy nexus. Dr. Gual Soler serves on the Research, Innovation, and Science Policy High-Level Advisory Group to the European Commissioner, Carlos Moedas, and on the 3 advisory board of the Horizon 2020 project "Inventing a shared Science Diplomacy for Europe. (InsSciDE)." She has received multiple awards and recognitions, including “100 Spanish Experts in Innovation” by Cotec Foundation, “40 Under 40 Latinos in Foreign Policy” by the Huffington Post, and “10 Latinas Think Big Innovators to Watch in 2016.” Before joining AAAS, she was Arizona State University